The leftward drift of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates seems to reflect a common frustration within the party’s base: Democrats have simply never dreamed big enough.
Perhaps, lefties suspect, Democratic politicians have been cowed by bad-faith accusations of socialism. Or — worse — they’ve been captured by big-money special interests.
Implicitly or explicitly, a slate of recent books and essays suggests that this was a core failing of the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and others considered to be Democratic moderates. The takeaway: Democrats' inability to implement single-payer, a student-debt jubilee, a Green New Deal or other ideas on the progressive wish list is because of either insufficient political will or impure motives.